The nomination and appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is a slap in the face to women, who are faulted for not coming forward to report instances of sexual assault. His appointment is also a part of the inexorable transformation of our government and its institutions toward outright fascism and the protection of the elite, the corporations, and the politicians who represent them. Our country is certainly polarizing economically, socially, and politically. It is only through polarization that change can come about. As revolutionaries, we welcome polarization, as it allows for differences to be identified and motion to develop.
In this issue of Rally, Comrades! we address expressions of polarization, what it means, and what the future holds.
In the article, “What is Winning and Losing in the Midterm Elections?” we look at what really is at stake in the elections: whether the working class is able to see itself as a class, rather than as groupings with separate interests. There is no struggle for change today that can be won if it proceeds on the basis of separation according to color, gender, or generation. On the other hand, the issues coming forth that are characterized as being about color, gender, or generation represent real working-class interests. Under the surface, in urban, suburban, and rural communities, there is a growing sense of discontent, a need for change, and often unrecognized expressions of that. A vision of what that change becomes is all-important.
“The Rising Social Movement Today” looks at the developing response to the destruction of society as we have known it. The rising movement faces both new opportunities and new dangers. The opportunity is that a formerly secure sector of the industrial working class and a section of the intelligentsia, whose influence has always been used to bind the masses to the capitalist class, is increasingly being torn loose from their jobs, homes, and living standards. The destruction of this middle sector is important, because it destroys the idea that the workers and capitalists have the same interests. This sector has some history of organizing to fight for particular demands within the system. If that history of organization can be united with a sense that they belong to a class that can only move forward on the basis of breaking free of the confines of the past, a new unity based on real class interests can be fought for.
The article “Nationalization: What We Are Fighting For” addresses the needs and interests of the corporations versus those of everyday people. The main question facing the working class today is: in whose interest does the government operate, the corporations or the workers? People are becoming aware that the problems of society require national solutions from the government. They are demanding a program for nationalization in the interest of the people, even though they may not be consciously expressing it in this way.
“From the Editors: Ten Years After the Financial Meltdown” explains that the mid-term elections showed how the ruling class is moving quickly to ideologically divide the workers. The elections clearly revealed that the process of political polarization is intensifying. A rising movement for democracy and for the necessities of life at one pole and the rise of fascism at the other.
“Crossing the Nodal Line” opens up the discussion about how the country and the world are being drawn into the final conflict. How do we fight forward to save our class? We can say that America (and the entire world) is reaching the point when things can no longer continue the way they were. Something has to change, and it will change very dramatically. It is going to open the door for revolutionary organizations everywhere to begin to consolidate and reassert themselves as a force in history.
The fascist police State we face has every advantage against us. They have everything, except for the decisive thing. They do not have the historical process on their side. It is on our side. We have a crucial and critical base at our disposal if we learn how to use it. This base is the destruction of the capitalist economy, the rise of social revolution, and the emergence of a new class of workers being created from laborless production who can no longer survive under the capitalist system.
It is clear that we have entered a period of time when we can create history. This is what we are in the revolutionary movement for. We came into the revolutionary movement because we wanted to see a different kind of world. We are now leaving the industrial economy; we are leaving the old. There is now the real possibility of creating a new world.
November.December 2018 Vol28.Ed6
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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